Keith Richards’s *Life*

I very much enjoyed this book, which also gave me an excuse to dig out old Rolling Stones albums and listen to them again (“Dear Doctor” is perhaps my favorite Stones song, an odd choice).  If it were a 2013 publication this memoir would make my best books of the year list.  Here is p.167:

“The only reason we got a record deal with Decca was because Dick Rowe turned down the Beatles.  EMI got them, and he could not afford to make the same mistake twice.  Decca was desperate…they thought, it’s just a fad, it’s a matter of a few haircuts and we’ll tame them anyway.  But basically we only got a record deal because they could just not afford to fuck up twice.”